pantoum's Diaryland Diary

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HOME-GROWN GOODNESS

235.

So I was looking around the Web and wondering if I should actually use my free tuition waiver now that I�m not teaching thirty graduate students in addition to running all these departments and encountered this poem, addressed to a chicken:

DEAR CHICKEN
by Gabriel Gudding

Dear Chicken,
I'm sorry the farmboy punts you. Our housecat is a racist and considers you a brand of Arabian sparrow. Most butterflies are just hinged shabby paper. I don't get your feet: you are such this dressed up lizard. What if I were to plug the tail of a cow into its rectum? Would its hooves frizzle and short-circuit? Is the pumpkin a Catholic or a Lutheran? The evangelist exploded on my mother. There was missionary-slurry all over her.

Yesterday I inserted a frozen caterpillar into my urethra. It thawed and crawled out. I am punching the bunny in the head. I am not going to put the bunny in my mouth. Won't fit. Even a small bunny won't fit in my mouth. You are my chicken. I will send you some nail polish, you can paint your beak with it. That way you can be a pretty chicken.
Sincerely,
Gabriel Gudding

Gabriel Gudding is the author of A Defense of Poetry (Pitt, 2002) and rhode island notebook (currently under consideration at a press near you). An assistant professor of English at Illinois State University, he is a trained mediator and practices Vipassana in the tradition of Sayagyi U Ba Khon.

Finally heard back from mammography. They are doing another screening and then a procedure�probably multiple cyst aspirations�on 9/9. Whee! Our deductible just kicked in, so I�m pretty sure that the little bit of freelance money that�s left after my periodontist bills and oral surgery bills and hotel bills and car repair bills will now be swallowed up by aboob procedure. Sigh.)

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So I�ve been logging onto weather.com off and on all day following the hurricane and just read that, on historic Jackson Square in the French Quarter, two massive oak trees outside the almost 300-year-old St. Louis Cathedral fell on either side of a marble statue of Jesus, snapping off the thumb and forefinger of his outstretched hand, but leaving him standing

This reminds me of a random fact I�ve always wanted to incorporate into a poem�one that would be a lot more effective if I actually believed in Christ (my utterances of O Christ! or For The Love of Gawd! not withstanding): when the choirgirls in MLK Sr.�s church died in the KKK bombings, the stained-glass window remained intact except Jesus�s face blew out ... almost as if he couldn�t bear to see the horror before him.

And speaking of racists and David Duke and the southern regions, everyone who knows anything about The Big Easy knows about its vulnerabilities to flooding. But I just read something fewer people know about. Turns out Louisiana lost more than a million acres of coastal wetlands in the last seventy years. That�s swamps and bayous that once served as storm buffers, folks.

This puts me in mind of Hillary� Clinton's comments after her trip to Alaska to see the effects of climate change firsthand:

We can�t afford to live in an evidence-free zone where science takes a back seat to ideology.

And finally, as follow-up on a conversation with Pottergrrl, my top-ten favorite foods, in no particular order:

1. a homegrown tomato picked fresh off the vine, salted and peppered
2. grilled lobster, with drawn butter and lemon
3. cheese glorious cheese (of almost any variety)
4. South Cackylacky hickory pit�cooked barbecue
5. crab, with drawn butter and lemon
6. fresh Silver Queen corn on the cob, with butter and white pepper
7. applewood-smoked bacon (especially cooked in a cast-iron skillet over a campfire)
8. an red-centered, South Cackylacky August peach, in cream
9. fresh fried oysters
10. a home-baked sugar-cured ham, cooked with cloves and brown sugar and pineapple slices

And yes, folks, my South Cackylacky roots are definitely showing when this list consists of three pork items, three fresh seafood items, and loads of home-grown goodness.

4:52 p.m. - 2005-08-29

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